I have heard a report that Ford Motor Company is going to sell the Jaguar and Land Rover divisions to Tata Motors of India. It struck me as extremely ironic that a company in a former colony of Great Britain would take over two iconic British automobile brands.

I tried to think of a similar scenario that could occur in the United States to make it more clear to a domestic audience the full import of this chain of events.

What I finally came up with is the United States continuing the war in Iraq until success. This would mean that Iraq would finally stabilize and its economy could once again flourish given their vast oil resources.

Unfortunately the cost to the United States for this success was a hollowing out of the U.S. economy. Our own companies would end up struggling more and more for survival. The dollar would continue to slide and the price of oil denominated in dollars would continue to rise. Eventually a company in the wealthy country of Iraq would have to come to the rescue of General Motors by buying up its Cadillac division.

I wonder if anyone in Great Britain in 1950 would think that an Indian company would ever own Jaguar and Land Rover. I wonder if anyone in the U.S. in 2008 could conceive of the possibility that the downfall of the U.S. began with the Iraq war. What could we do to prevent this from happening? Or is it too late?